Hollyland: Make everyone's cake bigger

Love is transmitted among the company's top management, employees and customers, and the business grows in sweetness.

Zhong Li, the general manager of the Human Resources Department of Holiland, shed tears in front of reporters more than once. It was a tear from the bottom of my heart. In the more than one hour interview, her most spoken sentence was "our employees are really cute" and her most spoken word was "love culture".

"Sometimes I'm a little bit surprised by myself, why can't I tell these things calmly. I've been moved by these things for a long time, but I can't help but cry every time." Zhong Li also said, At the meeting, employees told stories about themselves and their customers on stage, and President Luo Hong, who was sitting under the stage, often burst into tears.

These are just a few bits and pieces of the culture of Holly Loves. In this cake world, there are two things that are sure to be encouraged and praised, one is loving employees and one is loving customers. The invisible and ubiquitous love is the essence of the way of human beings.

The culture of love starts from loving the employees

At Hollywood Bakery, I often see many people queuing up to buy dumplings. Although the sale of glutinous rice balls has only started in recent years, it has quickly gained recognition. What do you think are the foundations that support your company's continued growth?

Culture and values are the foundation of our company's expansion. Whether it is the cultivation of talents or the grasp of quality, we always adhere to the culture of love. We deliver beautiful products and products of love. You may have noticed that the sales of glutinous rice balls are very hot this year. In fact, we are doing it very early. We buy cakes and bread, and we will send glutinous rice balls in small bags to customers. Our products are deeply rooted in people's hearts step by step. Many businesses may recommend the most expensive and most profitable products to customers, but when we train our employees, the idea we give them is to let customers choose suitable products according to their needs.

A culture of love starts with loving employees?

Starts on the employee's first day on the job. It's not just written on the employee handbook, it's happening around him. We all affectionately call her old aunt who is in charge of logistics in the Beijing market. She is over 80 years old this year. She is full of grandmother-like care for every employee, from arranging food and housing for employees, to caring about their lives, and even marriage. All the staff feel that it is very lucky to be received by the old aunt. Her approach has also infected logistics managers in other cities. Everyone wants to make employees feel like home as soon as they join Hollywood.

After the employee regards Hollyland as his home, he will regard customers as guests in his own home, and all he thinks about is how to make customers like Hollyland. Because he has feelings for customers in his heart, he can do many things spontaneously and come up with many good ways. The training is done in my department, and many times I can't give such a good case.

Like what?

As you may know, Hollyland is free to mend cakes for customers, and we were the first to do so. The president has said that what we mend is not just a piece of cake, but also the emotions of customers towards us. Employees are well aware of what our rules and regulations hope to achieve. The employees do this job to the extreme.

This incident happened in a store in Hohhot and was shared at last year's annual meeting. A gentleman came in with a cake and said "order another cake". While he was waiting, the foreman asked him, you already have a cake of another brand, why do you want to order another one from Hollywood. The gentleman told him angrily that he slipped and broke the cake when he accidentally went out. He went back and asked the shop to fix it, and the shop told him it didn't have the service. The foreman said, we can mend the cake for you. The customer was very moved, because it was not our product, but our staff offered to help him fix it.

Things like this are not required by the rules and regulations, and our rules and regulations will not cover helping customers repair competitors' cakes, but in this corporate culture of love, our employees will take the initiative to go to Do. Because he hopes to let customers know through his actions that Hollyland is delivering beautiful emotions, not just selling products.

That is to say, love employees, and employees will pass on love to customers?

Yes. Don't try to teach him what to do. Training can only be done on the standardization of the process, and it is impossible to predict what kind of requirements each customer will make and what kind of situation they will face. If we just train employees what to do in situations, it will never meet the needs of customers. It is impossible for rules and regulations to cover all behaviors. At this time, the company's values and culture play a role in guiding employees. According to this guidance, he can judge what behavior should be taken.

The skills of love, built with training

How to let every employee pass on love to customers, and pass it on particularly well?

Our focus when training our employees and managers is to help them improve their ideas. I don't know if you have seen "QBQ! The book "The Problem Behind the Problem", which is also the theme of our annual meeting this year, guides employees to think about what I can do under the status quo in any situation. The training of skills is actually quite simple. Now the degree of homogeneity of products and services is getting higher and higher, everyone knows to say "welcome" and "thank you for coming" when leaving. Just doing these things mechanically won't get the effect you want. Therefore, we pay more attention to cultivating the concept and spontaneity of employees, and do this from the heart. Without you to teach him, he will create a lot of shining points and do a lot of things that move you. In each annual meeting, we will set aside half a day for everyone to share examples of touching customers that happened around us in various cities.

Apart from the annual meeting, what other opportunities are there to cultivate ideas and exchange experiences?

Daily training sessions are not about teaching knowledge, but about sharing experience. You can share your examples in large classes and discuss in small groups. For example, in the course of customer satisfaction, we talked about the need for managers to talk to customers often, and we will let everyone communicate how you talk to customers and what good examples are around you. Our learning is behavioral learning, not just theory.

I taught all the courses for the first time, and now I don't need to teach the basic courses, because we have trained many internal lecturers, there are nearly 200. Usually he may be a front-line store manager, and he is a lecturer when the class starts. How are instructors certified? First of all, he completed all the training by himself, and when he achieves a certain position, he will receive training from the internal lecturer course, and then let him share his experience in a small area, and everyone will give him some suggestions. Our lecturers have standardized guides for knowledge points, so the knowledge points passed on by everyone are standardized, but he will add personal experience. The training courses are graded. For the course for store managers, the lecturer is at the level of operations manager, and the lecturer at the level of store manager can be competent for the course for employees.

How does the company arrange corresponding courses according to the different training needs of employees?

The course is divided into different stages, pre-employment introduction, customer service, product sales, which are the most basic. Promoted to foreman, trainer, courses with trainers, and then on to courses with management, from management one, management two, management three to management promotion. We provide employees with a development map, he can follow this guide to learn. Each employee comes in with a one-on-one trainer who is responsible for the training of his employees. When each trainee manager comes in, a store manager is in charge of his training arrangements for that stage. He himself has a study manual with his study records on it. Even if he changes jobs, changes cities, and stores, the next person who takes over will be able to know from the record what stage he is currently training at, and the manager will arrange for him to take part in training courses at that time.

At the beginning of each year, we will make a very detailed training plan, and arrange the frequency and time of the courses according to the number of trainees. For example, 6 intern managers come in in January, and 3 intern managers come in in March. The time required for their training is different, and the course arrangement should be based on this. Each class is about three to five days, and it is carried out full-time.

But some things can't be taught.

Not all behaviors can be taught. Regulations can only give standardized guidelines and procedures. We are now taking a coaching approach to help the other party discover their potential and help them find ways to solve problems, which is what we call empowerment to employees, so that they have the ability to do everything that can satisfy customers. Just like fixing the cake, we will not write in the article that we can fix the cake for our competitors, but the employee will do it, not only without worrying about being criticized, he will also be praised. Everyone knows that as long as I do something that will satisfy my customers, I will be recognized.

Once I accompanied the president to New Year's greetings, and I saw such an incident in a store in Mudanjiang. A teenage boy and an old man pulled into the store. It turned out that the old man insisted on not asking for cake. , thinks it's too wasteful and says "you take it and I'll throw it away". The child was very embarrassed because he had already paid the money, and he came here today to collect it. The two fought. Our clerk said to the boy, "It's okay, we can help you return this cake, if you are in a dilemma." The boy was surprised and said, "Can you still return it? The cake has its name written on it." We can't write in the rules and regulations, customers quarrel, we can give them back the cake, but our employees know what to do for customers. In fact, she is just an ordinary waiter, but she doesn't need to ask the store manager. When the customer does not ask for it, she sees that the customer is very embarrassed, so she takes the initiative to do something to prevent the customer from being embarrassed. As a result of this, although we sold one less cake, when the boy chooses a cake in the future, he will definitely choose Hollyland with confidence.

A common situation in many businesses is that when a customer asks for a refund, the clerk says, "Sorry, this can't be refunded. If it is refunded, the money will be deducted from my salary."

Yes, because they Treat employees the same way. It's really like what our president said, "how you treat your employees, employees treat customers as they do". You give the employee the authority to fully satisfy the customer, and he will know that he will be recognized for doing it. He knew that his behavior would not be criticized, so he dared to do it and took the initiative to do it. That incident became a case study at our annual meeting that year.

What we have been doing is to make our employees feel that our most important thing is customer satisfaction and do everything that makes customers happy. Therefore, when he weighs, it is not whether I have any loss of profit, but whether the customer can be satisfied, so the method he came up with must be a method to satisfy the customer. When we give lectures to employees and store managers, the first thing we ask him to consider is customer satisfaction. If your orientation is profit maximization, then the employee's constant consideration is that the profit cannot be lost. What is the real loss for the business? In fact, losing customers is.

The driving force of love is to share the company's achievements

Good stories will be shared, and will employees who have done good behaviors be rewarded?

Of course. We evaluate excellent employees every year, about 5%. In the past, the president went to various stores across the country to pay New Year's greetings every year, and he had to personally present the awards. In addition, there are Smile Ambassadors and the Most Impressive Customer Award. But more, we don't need to wait for either year or quarter, we give immediate rewards and recognition.

This is a case from the Shenyang market. A time employee, she got married in the morning, had dinner with the two families, and had a shift in the afternoon. She took off her wedding dress and did not take off her makeup, so she rushed back to work. The store manager immediately reported it to the general manager of the Shenyang market, and the general manager decided on the spot, saying that I want you to become the most expensive hourly worker in China. She worked a seven-hour shift that day and was given a $3,500 bonus. The general manager praised the employee's practice, and the president spoke highly of it. At every level, when you do something really good for the business and for the people, you get praised.

Our president loves employees very much. He loses his temper because of things that hurt or bad for employees. As long as it is good for the employees, just do it, he will definitely be sure. He drives the people around him, and the people around him drive more people, so that the infection is level by level.

Mr. Luo said that Hollyland will not blindly pursue expansion. If the speed of talent development cannot keep up, it would rather slow down the speed of expansion. How is the training now?

The blind pursuit of expansion by the president mainly refers to joining. We are still not joining. In recent years, our internal development has been very fast. Now we have nearly 800 stores, which is almost double that of 2005. We are still in the stage of continuously cultivating talents. We generally recruit fresh college graduates as intern managers. It takes at least 18 months from when he joins the company to when he becomes a more mature store manager who can lead a store independently. The speed of opening a store is about the same as the speed of talent training.

But it is possible to join internally.

Yes. Since 2005, we have given excellent employees the opportunity to join in. A certain level must have worked at Hollywood for more than 6 years, and employees must have worked for more than 8 years. The reason for setting this period is to hope that he can have a high degree of recognition of the company and understand Holiland's insistence and requirements on quality. The employee who joins will resign from the company and go directly to manage the store in the franchise area he applies for. The qualifications are also checked to see if he has the ability to manage these stores.

Our vision is that our employees can develop with the development of the company, and everyone can live an enviable and beautiful life. Many people want to be bosses, so give employees such opportunities. The president also regularly sends some shares to outstanding employees, and he never wants any dividends every year, but they are all given to employees. Many employees are now shareholders and work for themselves. It is not convenient for me to disclose what percentage of internal franchises account for it. Whether joining or giving away shares, it is an encouragement for employees and a kind of welfare.

Individually, how much room for growth is there?

The biggest development span is from the original production staff to the general manager of the regional company. Many operation managers were promoted from the original staff, including the department manager of the headquarters, who also started from ordinary waiters. Some have been continuously improved in terms of technology. In the front office, perhaps management has improved even more. There are also many management positions in technology, such as technical manager, which not only requires you to be highly skilled, but also requires a certain management ability, which requires you to manage the products and quality of the entire market.

Each series of employees has a very clear development path. But there are also bottlenecks, especially for technical staff. Not everyone is suitable for management, but he may be very good at his own life and very good in technology. So technically, we give them a lot of space. The technical level is divided into 9 levels. Even if you have no management ability, as long as you do well in technology, you can still get the same salary level as the district manager. There are technical ratings every year. Some employees are not satisfied with this status quo and want to seek more development. They can put it forward to his direct manager. We will consider whether there are other positions that can allow him to develop, such as logistics management, and do some transfer and related training. How is the

level rated?

Once a year, the R&D department assigns a rating teacher to issue unified examination questions, which are divided into theoretical assessment and practical assessment. Level 2 can be tested for level 3, level 3 can be tested for level 4, and you cannot skip the test. Now there are 5 technicians who have passed the exam. Level 5 questions are so hard that even I can't answer them. For example, if you want to calculate the area of a hexagon, I asked why you need to take this test. They said that it is because you need to calculate the materials and amounts of semi-finished products.

Does everyone start from scratch?

In the past, we did not recruit people with industry experience, to be precise, without any industry experience. In order to ensure the transmission of our quality and culture, it is cultivated from scratch. The company invests all these employees to go to the training school for 2-4 months of off-the-job training to learn the basic knowledge of product manufacturing, product basics, hygiene standards and corporate culture. We are also worried that people who have worked in other companies will have some bad work habits. With the increasing maturity of the training and monitoring system in recent years, and the ability to track employees' requirements for product quality, we are now trying to recruit some people who have work experience in other industries.

How stable is the staff?

Generally speaking, our staff is very stable, especially in the past, and it has been a little mobile in recent years. To be honest, this phenomenon is rare in the service industry. There are many opportunities in the market now, including other companies in the cake industry. But many of our employees regret it after going out. We welcome employees to come back, but when they do come back, do it from scratch, starting with the basics. Even so, more and more employees are asking to come back. Of course, they actually grow a bit faster than employees who actually start from scratch.

Is the president still paying New Year's greetings now?

In the past, the president personally gave awards to outstanding employees every year. There are more cities now, and there are more stores in each city. It may be the eighth day of the first month when I reach the last city, so I have stopped worshipping since last year. Every year, the president records a New Year's film, and everyone can have a reunion party on the evening of the 30th. This year's New Year's film is the CEO's secret in Antarctica and the tidbits of taking pictures of penguins.